Sagging Breasts May Not Be Due to Nursing
Breast Implants, Breast Lift Comments Off
If a recent report is true, plastic surgeons from Los Angeles to New York are going to quit making nursing the bug bear of drooping breasts.
Until now, when a woman requests a breast lift, the surgeon usually explained the drooping of her breasts to one of three things:
- Breast feeding
- Loss of massive amounts of weight (MWL)
- Older age
Consequently, many women concerned about their figures choose not to breastfeed, even though the practice is known to transfer certain health benefits to babies.
But now, several plastic surgeons have studied women with one pregnancy behind them and who later asked for aesthetic breast surgery. (Many moms request breast lift with breast augmentation.)
Plastic surgeon Brian Rinker, M.D., from Lexington, Kentucky, took a close look at the records of 93 women who had at least one pregnancy and some form of breast surgery. Dr. Rinker and his colleagues then assigned to each patient the degree of pre-surgical sagging – technically known as ptosis (pie-toe-sis) –from zero to three.
Dr. Rinker and his colleagues then interviewed each patient and collected information on:
- Age
- Number of pregnancies
- History of breastfeeding
- Duration of breastfeeding
- Body mass index (BMI)
- Pre-pregnancy bra size
- Weight gain during pregnancy
- History of smoking
But when the doctors crunched all the numbers, they found the following factors were more serious risks for drooping breasts:
- Higher age
- Greater BMI
- More pregnancies
- Larger pre-pregnancy cup size
- Smoking
Notably absent from leading risk factors: breastfeeding, even when the woman nursed for longer periods of time. (Read more about the study on sagging breasts.)
Says Alan H. Gold, M.D., president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS): “Patients need to be armed with objective data….when making important health decisions.”
Dr. Gold also said the study should be repeated with larger numbers of patients to really nail down breast feeding’s effect on the breasts.
Have you ever nursed? What happened to your bust line?
admin @ December 30, 2008